Nicotine effects
How smoking could affect the brains of the young
Adolescents who smoke bring irreparable damage to their brains. Their concentration decreases, and impulsivity increases.
"This could mean that early smoking contributes to the development of attention and impulsivity disorders such as ADHD," said Sabrine Nail (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
A university in Amsterdam, examining the effect of nicotine, put rats into a cage where lights were installed in five holes.
If a light was burning, the rats had their snouts as quickly as possible through the corresponding hole, stabbing. Which yielded a reward. Rats that underwent puberty got nicotine administered, and performed 5 to 10 percent worse.
At the time that a lot of attention was requested, they missed a light, "says researcher Sabine Spijker of De Volkskrant. Their concentration was found due to nicotine bloodstream deteriorating their impulsiveness.
LESS CONCENTRATION
If you translate this to people, you're talking about young people who start smoking between the twelfth and sixteenth, "says Nail. In later life would be that workers who do it are fine.
But once it becomes extremely difficult, they seek to hook them off sooner than others. They can not quite keep their attention.
The researchers discovered that nicotine in adolescents leads to a permanent reduction of a specific protein, mGluR2, in the part of the brains that regulate attention and concentration. The protein can be stimulated with drugs, and that can also lead to less attention stimulated, but this only works temporarily.
ADULT BRAINS
All rats that indulged in nicotine in adulthood had no problems with continuing problems because their brains were already formed. The brains of rats and humans are very similar.
The researchers are therefore observing comparable effects in humans and cause so addictive substances like nicotine permanent damage to young brains.
But such research is not repeated in humans, for ethical reasons: the young people who would participate in smoking and thus would learn would be at a big risk of getting addicted to cigarettes.